“You did it!” Esther says. “If you can see your illusions, does that mean all the Nameless can too? Are all of them citizens?”
“All of them, including me,” I say with a giddy laugh. “Except…I don’t think it was just me who allowed this to happen. It was you, too. You gave me your tattoo, and you never even knew my name. It took both of us accepting the Nameless and accepting each other to fix everything. Our father was right. The tattoo has been reunited. He didn’t make me Nameless so that I’d grow up and accept them as citizens. He made me Nameless so that you would grow up as a powerful leader and so that you would accept me as your sister and as Nameless. He did it so that we would accept each other and ourselves. It was about you all along, Esther.”
“It was both of us together,” Esther says. “But is Belrosa…?”
“She’s alive. I guess.”
“Did she escape?” Esther asks. “We can send a Royal guard—I mean, if there are any that aren’t still loyal to her.” She tries to pull herself up into a seated position, and she winces.
From across the room, I gesture for Rhana to join us.
“I did something maybe worse,” I explain as Rhana picks her way through the cots. “I don’t even know how I did it, exactly. I trapped Belrosa in her own worst fear. As far as I can tell, she’s living it over and over again.”
“Belrosa’s here,” Hat says. She points to a cot in the distant corner, where Belrosa’s sleeping form lies motionless. Esther’s jaw tightens, and she leans up to catch a glimpse.
“Oh no you don’t,” Rhana says. She taps the center of Esther’s forehead. “That’s enough of that, Your Highness. You’ll pull out your sutures if you keep that up. Don’t make me have your sister put you back to sleep.”
Both our eyes widen in alarm. She knows we’re sisters?
“Sorry!” Hat says from two cots away. She’s obviously been eavesdropping the entire time. She scampers to join us. “That was me! I told her. During the surgery, it looked like Esther might need some transfused blood—which is a new but very cool procedure—and she didn’t know who would have compatible blood. So I sold you out. But she didn’t end up taking any of your blood! Isn’t that great?” Hat twists a curly lock of red hair between her fingers.
Rhana pats Esther’s shoulder. “I kept your secret for a very long time. I can keep this one too.”
“Apparently, you were one of her most difficult surgeries,” Hat says with a weird sense of pride.
“And one of my most successful,” Rhana says.
“You should have seen it!” Hat gushes. “There was so much blood.”
“Hat is learning very quickly,” Rhana says. “Your friend will be a great doctor someday.”
“She will,” Esther says.
A slow smile overtakes me. “But you’ve got it wrong. She’s not my friend.”
Hat’s eyes fall.
“She’s my sister,” I say, smiling. “They both are.”
I wrap my arm around Esther’s shoulders, and Hat leans in and puts an arm around my waist.
“You’re my family,” I say to Hat, pulling her close and wrapping my arm around her. “I choose you to be in my life. You make it better. And, as terrifying as it is to care about someone, I care about you. There’s no way around it.”
Glenquartz clears his throat to let me know that, as always, he’s standing as a shadow at the edge of the room. He has a few bruises on his face, but his beard is excellent as ever.
I extend my arm to him, and his eyes crinkle with delight as he joins us.
“All right—off, off!” Rhana chastises, shooing us away from the bed. “Let her rest. And you can have this back now.” Rhana opens a small drawer in the bedside table and pulls out the metal circlet, but it’s badly dented.
“What? Why is that here?” I ask.
Esther frowns at it. “You put it away in your wardrobe, so I stole it back. You’re a terrible influence on me, it must be said. I was going to give it to you at the festival—crown you in front of everyone. It was a great image in my head.”
“Well, it saved your life,” Rhana says. “You had it in the inside pocket of your jacket, and it deflected the sword when you got stabbed.”
“I guess it’s not good for wearing anymore,” Esther says with a sigh. I can tell she’s getting tired.
“Actually,” I say, “if you’re not using it, I’ll take that.”
“Really? I don’t think it’ll sit on your head properly,” Esther says, gesturing for Rhana to pass it to me.
“I owe Devil something interesting,” I say. “And this will fit the bill nicely.”
Glenquartz moves to the foot of Esther’s bed, leaning forward on the balls of his feet and drumming his fingers on the sheet. He’s doing everything short of jumping with his arms waving.
“Oh my goodness, Glen-beard,” I say. “Your aura is buzzing like three hundred thousand bees. What is it you want to tell me?”
“That is one thing I won’t miss about the auras,” Esther says, and I realize she can no longer sense auras or use magic. But she doesn’t seem sad.
“I have some news to share with you,” Glenquartz says.
“Is it good news?” I ask, already tired.
“It’s not great news,” he says.
I frown. “What is it?”
“The man you called Marcher?” he says. “You spoke to him in the middle of the duels. From what I can tell, he’s gone.”
I pinch the sheet between my fingers. “Gone where?”
“During the chaos after the duels, he disappeared,” Glenquartz says. “So did most of those Nameless soldiers. A few of them did stay behind, and there’s two of them out in the corridor who wish to speak with you.”
“Funny thing about being queen,” Esther says, suppressing a yawn. “It’s not so much a job as it is your life now.”
“Oh, sure,” I tease. “Now you tell me.”
“I’ll be recovering for weeks,” she says, shooing me. “But a crisis cannot wait, Coin.”
When she says my name, it flickers through me like a spark of pride. A swish of blue, a lingering warmth, and her aura settles into its place.
Hat touches my elbow to reassure me that she has everything in hand. As she does, I’m filled with a rushing sense of golden light. This must be her happiness, her joy. It overwhelms me, and I could almost laugh and cry at the same time.